Beginning to Mend
by RebelBelly
Summary: Sansa and Jon reconnect after years of being apart. Sharing their different journeys, fears, and hopes for the future. (tw for abuse and rape mention)


They did not intend to have this particular conversation per se, they probably should have, but time and distance had left them nearly strangers. These conversations weren't meant for strangers, but leaning closer to the great fire in the hearth of Jon's Lord Commander quarters Sansa saw out of the corner of her eye a version of the father she remembered from long ago. Or maybe she just imagined him this way, before the Northern winds had blown hard lines onto his face. Before he lost his head to Joffrey. Sansa found herself wondering if Jon smiled just as little as their father had. She certainly does.

Jon tells her of how much he wished he'd left the Wall to aid Robb, how sorry he was for leaving Arya and Sansa with the Lannister's. She couldn't be mad at him, just as much as he couldn't be mad at her when she explained her complacency in the capital. She had been so quiet, so scared to fight back. They had both been trying to survive. It's the truth yet it feels hollow, and does little to dull the clench in her chest.

When they had begun the midday sun had hung low in the sky. By now the morning was only hours off but the years had come and gone, and so do their tales. He's telling her of a red haired wildling he had fallen for, explaining how he couldn't kill her even when he knew he had to.

"Well at least she only shot at you once," Sansa had meant to quip, but instead it dragged out into the winter night and hung in the air between them.

A moment of silence, "You don't have to tell me if you'd prefer."

He was silent, but she could feel the heat of his gaze on her skin.

All these years she's held the truth so close to her heart, never letting another soul peek at the cards she had pulled to her chest. But with Jon she felt safe even when she knew she wasn't. The last time she'd felt this way she had taken off riding for the South with her father by her side.

She tries to brush the tears from her eyes before they fall but he notices and comes to bring his cloak around her shoulders. She almost laughs to herself, remembering all those years ago when she had spent afternoons teaching the boys etiquette and chivalry lessons carried over from her own lessons with Old Nan. She's almost surprised that Jon would remember something like that before she dismisses the thought. Of course he wouldn't remember something so trivial as that, he's simply a gentleman in his own right Sansa notes. There's so much she has to learn of this man she barely recognizes in manner.

She would have dismissed the cloak itself but the thought of Ramsey brings a chill to her skin and she welcomes the gesture openly, motioning for Jon, now without the source of his warmth, to join her by the fire.

He sits beside her and for a moment there's nothing but the crackling of the fire and the distant sound of the wind.

"It was worse than death," Sansa starts and stops in the same breath, the courage she had dwindling. She wasn't ready to say everything, maybe she never would be. But she needed to say this one thing, if only to have it on the conscious of one other person. Maybe then some of its weight could lift off her shoulders.

She watched Jon's hand move toward hers resting on her knee. She didn't mean to, but she moved it away instinctively. To think she had once been so free, she used to run and jump into her brothers arms. She would sing, and read stories aloud, and she would laugh so loudly Old Nan scolded her as she tucked Sansa into bed.

"Jon," Sansa whispered, looking up to see his gaze is filled with anger, or was it sadness, she couldn't quite tell. "It's been too long since, since I last bled. And I'm scared that,"

She doesn't finish, she doesn't need too as she catches the moment of realization wash over his face before she's turned her head and wiping the tears from her eyes again.

He stands when her back is turned on him and she finds the composure she's just barely clinging to, to stand as well. It feels better than having him stand over her as she cowers closer to the fire.

"I must send for a maester then," He's pacing. Making no move to tell a squire this, and a question settles between them. She's searching for a way to voice it, when he looks to her, "if that's what you want?"

It's been too long since anyone's asked her that. She lulls over the question for a moment but answers with the truth, "I want to be sure, yes."

He opens the door of his chambers to request the maester and they wait together exchanging more of their story as they wait the hour. Jon gives Sansa's hand a squeeze before he leaves the room, the squire having returned with the maester from Molestown. He's not as wise as Aemon Jon warned, but he knows his art; he'll tell the truth but can be trusted to be discreet.

Sansa's chill returns as she slips out of her winter gown and stands in her small clothes before the old man. He has kind eyes she whispers to herself. But she can't help from turning her own eyes to the floor as the man took in a sharp breath at the sight of her bare arms. Littered with bruises that were going down but still hurt to touch, as well as scars from both years gone by and these past few months. She clutched her arms in an attempt to hide but she knew that this was only the beginning, and the years had left her scared in worse places than her arms.

He is quick and gentle in his assessment, sharing his diagnosis, and even planting a quick but firm kiss a top her head, flashing his kind eyes once more before slipping back into the hallway with a curt bow. Sansa redresses quickly and stands before the fire to rewarm herself.

It's over a quarter of an hour before there's a short knock that could only be Jon, "Come in."

Her voice feels too small, too distant for him to have possibly heard her but he enters anyway.

"Sansa," Its a question or perhaps something more, but it goes unfinished.

"I'm fine Jon," Her eyes find his. A small smile forms on her lips and it causes her to look away from him, to her hands clasped in front of her, "I'm not... I'm not."

"I know." She should have known that the private matters of the Lady of Winterfell would not be kept from Jon, the Commander of the Nights Watch.

"He said you're malnourished Sans," Jon's voice shakes, "That the bruises, gods that there's scars,"

"Jon please," Sansa interrupted, "I know that this is hard to understand, but I'm happy. In this moment please let me be happy. Because he may have scarred me, and bruised me, and whittled me down to skin and bone. But I am here, I'm still standing. And he will never have me again, he has no claim over my body, or a child. I'm free, and here. I'm safe with you."

Jon closes the space between them, holding a frail hand in his calloused ones,"Sansa, you have my word. I will never let him touch you again."

"I want him dead Jon," Sansa's eyes bore into Jon's, "But I want Winterfell more than that. I want him out of my home. Those rooms hold the happiest moments of my life, our lives. We cannot let him have them, not after everything he's taken from us. Think of Robb. And if Bran and Rickon get word that we're there, safe. Maybe even Arya too. Maybe we could have our family back."

She watched the weight of her words fall on him. She was asking him to fight for something he had been denied all his childhood. Denied by her and their family, she wouldn't be begrudged if he laughed in her face. But Jon was not that kind of man. From the stories she'd heard, and of what she knew, he was brave, and gentle. He would not laugh at her dreams the way Joffrey had, the way she laughed at herself when she thought of a day they could be safe, free.

"I'm glad," Jon responded, "that you're well. That you're here where I can be of comfort as you are to me after so many years of feeling alone. But who are we - who am I to claim Winterfell? To ask the houses of the North to fight behind me?"

"You're the son of Lord Eddard Stark, he was beloved by the North. Far more than the Boltons ever could be." Sansa said.

"Bastard." Jon looked at her. "Not son, not heir."

"And I am just a girl. Passed around from husband to husband for the use and gain of others around me. A runway, a fugitive. But the blood of Winterfell runs in both of us Jon, the North is within you just as much as it is in me."

"After everything we've been through Sans," Jon sat placing his head in his hands, " I should have left the wall the first chance I got. I should have come and saved you, brought you to your mother, to Robb."

Sansa sat beside him on the Lord Commanders bed, placing a hand across his broad shoulders. The last time she had been this close to him they had been young children, before Septa Mordane had explain to her what being a Bastard had truly meant. It had been shortly before she had noticed that Jon wasn't treated like the rest of her siblings and before she had reached the age where she had copied every one of her mother's motions. Back when they had played together, laughed, and ran for hours chasing one another through the woods.

It had also been before Sansa had reached an age where ladies didn't consort with men, low born or of high birth just the same. Let alone lean on them as she was doing now, resting her check on his shoulder as he sat hands in face.

It was just Jon, she thought. But she hadn't really known him, not even when they had lived under the same roof, not truly. Not the thoughts in his head, or the dreams that he voiced. The stories he and Robb whispered, or the easy love he and Arya shared. Not since she was that free little girl running through the woods with a muddy dress, two brothers she saw no difference between, and a baby Arya on her mother's hip.

There has never been ill will between them, simply a lack of a relationship similar to the one Jon had with their other siblings. He was something of a stranger to her, and yet the heat from his body warmed her cheek, and she let herself take in the familiar smell of leather and pine. It smelt like home.

"Sansa?" Jon let out, whispering into the silence.

She stayed silent but hummed in response, somehow her eyes had grown tired, closing without her realization.

"I'm glad to see you again. Despite the circumstances, despite what's happened since last." Jon's voice was deep, melodic, "I had wanted to rescue you, you and Arya. But now, it feels as though maybe you've come to rescue me."

"Together," Sansa turned to him, grabbing one of his hands from his cheek, "we'll make it through. We'll get home Jon."

He stood up, nodded, and planted a kiss atop her head, "For now, sleep."

With that she watched him leave her in his chamber. She didn't know where he was to go, why he would give up his Lord Commanders room for her. But again, she didn't truly know him. Not yet.


End file.
